Holiday Gift Ideas

:santawave Hey everyone! With the holidays coming up, I am in need of some ideas for small gifts. I'm a little tights on cash, so I was thinking about maybe baking all of my friends something and putting it in a festive box or something like that.

Do you guys have any ideas for inexpensive gifts or good recipes I might try? Thanks ! :santawink

Pinkie you can make really great homeade hot chocolate mix very inexpensively! It makes lots!

1 can of baking coco
1 bag of powdered sugar
1 jar of what ever flavor of powder coffee creamer you like. Or if you don't want to make a "flavored" chocolate then use powdered milk. Mix it all up in a bowl dry. Put the mix into cute paper bags, you can get them cheap like 10cents at a paper outlet. Then type up a cute poem about hot chocolate and print it out on fun paper and tag the bags. You can put the directions on the bag too, like two table spoons and hot water.

I did this one year for a large office group and I put the chocolate in mugs, again outlet or TJ Maxx places like that cheap mugs.. then I put a few baby marshmallows in a little cute baggie and put this poem with it.. " You've been naughty so here's the scoop all you get for chistmas is snowman poop" it was pretty fun. I put candy canes and I made chocolate stirring spoons too. It is really easy, melt chocolate over the stove,(use a double boiler) you can find chocolate specifically for melting in the baking section at the grocery store. Then dip clear or whatever color plastic spoons you like in the chocolate enough to coat the spoon end. Lay them on wax paper to dry. Then melt white chocolate and pour into a small zip lock baggie snip a tiny hole in the corner and use it as a bag to "pipe" or drizzle white chocolate over the spoons drying on the wax paper. Just drizzle/ziz zag back and forth over all the spoons. It looks really pretty. You can tie up the spoons w/a square of saran wrap and pretty ribbon and put it in the mug w/the chocolate, marshmallows and candy cane. It looks really cute!

The chocolate makes quite a bit and it is pretty cheap to do. I usually make up a batch to have for hostess gifts and other stuff like that or a quick gift for someone who pops by.

Once year I baked a variety of Christmas cookies, bought some cheap glass jars which I decorated with a red bow & some christmas stickers & put the cookies in those & gave them away...

Pretty big hit & didnt cost much at all

I've got some very tasty Norwegian christmas cookie recipies, I'll have to pull them out in case any of you feel adventurous (altho pastry & sweet stuff is a Norwegian's strong side....so tehre's really no danger in trying any of them, just the danger of putting on extra poundage... )

Pinkie -- I agree with Crissy. Anything homemade, and I mean ANYTHING, is way better than store-bought. If you put some love and thought into a gift for sometome, it's always extra special and will be remembered.

Oh, and if you're short of cash, you can always give of yoursself; perhaps babysitting, cooking dinner, raking leaves, etc. I don't know -- but YOU do.

As our family expands and our paycheques stay the same its hard to find suitable fun 'trinkets' for gift giving. This year my daughter (who is 3) wanted to buy everything in sight for everyone! If we could afford it we would. Since we can't I had to come up with something a little creative.
There is this FABULOUS stuff called Crayola Model Magic. Its a clay/playdoh/plastiscene that is non-toxic and mess free. Seriously. You kneed it a bit and then you can form it into what ever you choose. It takes about 24 hours to dry. It dries to the consistancy of a stryofoam coffee cup. It is totally decoratable (my own word, thankyouverymuchLOL)
You can paint it, use markers, cut it, glue it, when its in it's wet state you can add glitter. It its truely a versitile product. I paid $4.97 at WalMart for it.
What we did with the CrayolaModel Magic was make Chrismas ornaments. I was at the dollar store last year and I got a whole bag of Christmas cookie stamps (not really cutters, they have detail etched into them) We rolled out the crayola magic with a rolling pin, stamped out the ornaments with the cookie stamps, used a small straw to make a hole in the top for a ribbon (to hang it from the tree) and my daughter chose and painted/coloured each one for every member of our family. We used a gold fabric marker to write 2003 on the back and I think this is a tradition that we will carry on year after year.
BTW that $4.97CDN bag of crayola model magic made about 2 dozen ornaments.

[IMG]C:\EasyPhoto\Photo\CMM.jpg[/img]

An example (keep in mind this was done by a 3 yr old I'm sure your's would be much better
[img]C:\EasyPhoto\Photo\xmasorn.jpg[/img] [img]C:\EasyPhoto\Photo\xmasorntree .jpg[/img]